Link between mothers' poor diets, kid...( In the new study mice born of m...)

In the new study, mice born of mothers who ate 30 percent less than normal were small at birth and had less fat. However, the undernourished newborns caught up with normal mice after ten days and, when fed a high-fat diet, developed pronounced weight gain and increased leptin levels compared to normal mice on the same diet.

The undernourished mice had lower body temperatures than normal mice, suggesting that the prenatal nutritional deficiency "programmed" them to conserve energy, the researchers said. During the catch-up growth period, the transient rise in leptin levels normally seen in newborns occurred six to eight days earlier in undernourished animals.

When the researchers mimicked that premature leptin surge by administering the hormone to normally fed mice, those animals also became prone to obesity upon eating a diet high in fat.

"Unexpectedly, normal offspring treated with leptin as newborns were indistinguishable from those that were undernourished before birth," Fujii said. "Premature onset of leptin surge is thus causally related to pronounced obesity in undernourished offspring on a high-fat diet."

The researchers further demonstrated that the mice experiencing a premature surge of fat hormone exhibited resistance to administered leptin, with impaired transport of the hormone to the brain and abnormalities in the hypothalamic brain region that governs leptin response. The findings suggest that the leptin surge may be a target for therapeutic intervention in the developmental origins of health and disease, the researchers said.

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Contact: Heidi Hardman
hhardman@cell.com
1-617-397-2879
Cell Press
7-Jun-2005